UFC lightweight Anthony Pettis looks to solidify his standing as a top contender with a win over Donald Cerrone on Saturday night.

Anthony Pettis has been in the mix for two years, but what does that even mean? It's time for the UFC to make it clear to fans and fighters.

Author’s Message: This piece was a long-time coming, but really fits right about now. I’ve been talking this idea through with my friend and colleague Matt Brown for the better part of a year, and he gets full share of the credit for this concept. That means he also gets a full share of the blame if you think this is stupid. It’s goes both ways, right?

Anthony Pettis has been “in the mix” for the last two years.

He came into the UFC as the final lightweight champion in WEC history, the anticipated challenger for the winner of UFC 125’s lightweight title bout. Two years later, “Showtime” is still waiting to fight for the title, having lost his place in line following a loss to Clay Guida, but working his way back to the top of the list with victories over Jeremy Stephens and Joe Lauzon.

Saturday night, the soon-to-be 26-year-old takes on fellow WEC alum Donald Cerrone in a grudge match that is a long time coming, and one that will help clarify the pecking order in the lightweight division.

Maybe.

Wednesday morning in Montreal, the UFC hosted a pre-event press conference featuring Georges St-Pierre and Nick Diaz, the welterweight champion and the man who will challenging him for said title at UFC 158 at the Bell Centre on March 16.

During the course of the hour-long engagement, UFC President Dana White suggested that the other two main card welterweight contests — Johny Hendricks vs. Jake Ellenberger, and Carlos Condit vs. Rory MacDonald — will essentially be a mini-tournament to establish the next title challenger in the 170-pound ranks, with Hendricks already the leading candidate in this newly suggested race.

Rather than christening a handful of fights “title eliminators,” accumulating a multitude of “#1 contenders” and then indiscriminately choosing challengers for their various champions, now would be a great time for the UFC to roll out a rankings system to help lessen the confusion, and turn up the intrigue, while organically helping on the marketing and promotions end.

How It Would Work(We’re not re-inventing the wheel here, but there are a couple caveats that set this apart from your standard 1 through 25 list set-up.)

You rank the top 25 fighters in each division based on performance, and you make’ em public. Roll’ em out every month on UFC Tonight, talk about them on the desk during live shows, and get them up on screen whenever you can. Talking about rankings, upcoming match-ups, and where guys sit in their respective division is better than having Jay Glazer fumble through highlights dropping personal anecdotes. Mention of a few of the guys “on the bubble” too, and make a big deal of the top movers and shakers of the month.

When fights are announced, state where each guy is ranked, if they’re ranked. When you put out fight cards, include where each fighter is ranked, if they’re ranked.

Here’s the catch: make it clear from Jump Street that anyone in the top 5 can be considered for a title shot at any time. This is essentially “The Nick Diaz Clause.” Johny Hendricks may be the #1-ranked welterweight right now, but Diaz would certainly be in the top 5, which makes him eligible to be tabbed as the title challenger.

With incoming talent like the Strikeforce crossovers, you simply slot them in wherever they fit once they arrive. Gilbert Melendez lands in the lightweight top 5, same with Luke Rockhold at middleweight. Determining where others like Tarec Saffiedine, Tim Kennedy, and Josh Thomson is a little more challenging, but they’re all top 25 competitors as well.

Why It Could Work(all rankings used below are approximations by the author)

Easy Marketing and Promotion of Lesser Known Fighters

Erik Koch vs. Ricardo Lamas means nothing to casual fans.

They’re not going to jump on Sherdog and check out their records or scour the ‘net for interviews and features explaining the importance of this bout. Throw a couple rankings next to each name and the fight that has gotten zero mention in the promotion of this event suddenly reflects how important this contest is to the featherweight division. #1 Erik Koch vs. #3 Ricardo Lamas stands out, and let’s anyone who looks up this fight know that these are two of the best fighters in the 145-pound weight class even if they know nothing else about them.

Fighters don’t have to be household names; their ranking helps identify them as contenders, prospects, newcomers, whatever. You may not have heard of Hatsu Hioki before, but seeing him billed as the #4 featherweight in the world opposite fan favorite (and #12-ranked) Clay Guida let’s you know he’s a formidable talent.

You see a card loaded with top-20 talent — as this weekend’s event is — you think twice about passing on it simply because you don’t recognize many of the names on the line-up.

Dana White’s standard collection of descriptors don’t carry any weight with fans anymore. There are too many guys “in the mix” and too many “title eliminator” fights for people to believe that the next man to win a “#1 contender bout” is actually going to be the #1 contender. If you know one of the fighters in the top 5 is guaranteed to be next in line, you’re bound to get more people paying attention to those fighters, especially the unknown commodities.

Casuals Fans Just Dive Right In

When you know the two guys in the cage are the #8 and #13-ranked lightweights in the UFC, that gives you instant context. You don’t have to know their history, either together or individually. They’re two of the top 15 fighters in their division; that’s enough of a hook for some casual fans, and something simple that let’s them know what they’re watching.

We’re used to standings and rankings in every other sport, and not having that in MMA makes it challenging for casual fans who stop by once every couple Saturdays to watch the fights can’t just sit down and understand the importance of the fights they’re watching. If you were a casual fan dropping in right before the Anthony Pettis/Donald Cerrone fight on Saturday, you don’t know how much they dislike each other or that they’re two of the top 10 lightweights in the sport.

But you would if the fight was accompanied by each man’s ranking.

Ask casual college basketball fans how influential the rankings are. If you flipped through the channels on a Saturday afternoon and saw Syracuse vs. Louisville, you might tune in because they’re historically strong programs. If you saw #6 Syracuse vs. #1 Louisville, chances are you’re immediately more interested. This is an Elite 8 or Final Four match-up on a Saturday afternoon, and all it took to get you more into the game were a couple numbers beside each team.

Easy to Track and Chart a Fighter’s Trajectory

Say you’re a Mike Pyle fan and you want to see where “Quicksand” sits in the welterweight division. All you have to do is look it up on ufc.com.

Coming off a trio of first-round finishes, you’d see the man with the best mullet in the 170-pound weight class sits at #14, with guys like Mike Pierce, Siyar Bahadurzada, and Demian Maia in front of him, and Jay Hieron, Dong Hyun Kim, and Erick Silva nipping at his heels. Being able to see where he stands, you can also forecast what it’s going to take for your favorite fighter to make a move into the top 10, and project what he’d need to do in order to break into the top five and become a potential title challenger.

You’re no longer just paying attention to your favorite fighter’s bout, but the two or three guys around him in the rankings; seeing who slips up, and who takes a step forward. Tracking the rise and fall of one fighter automatically connects you to other athletes in the division, the same way a Detroit Red Wings fan wants to see how the Chicago Blackhawks and St. Louis Blues did from night-to-night.

In Closing

Rolling out actual rankings is more a tool for connecting with new fans and turning a casual fan into a more engaged, regular viewer. You might even hit a home run and turn a couple of them into fight-obsessed zombies like me over time.

Hardcore fans already know the implications of every fight, understand the importance of different match-ups, and argue about where guys sit in their respective divisions anyway. All this would do for us is make it all officially known, making our debates a little less speculative, but no less heated.

For casual fans, however, it gives them pieces of the sporting set-up they’re used to already – standings, divisional implications, jockeying for position. You don’t need to know an omoplata from an armbar to know that a battle between the #2 and #5 middleweight in the world is a heck of a fight; you don’t even need to know anything about the fighters either.

With pay-per-view sales having plateaued and Year Two of the multi-year FOX deal underway, bringing in new fans and creating interest in fighters other than GSP, Anderson Silva, Chael Sonnen, and Jon Jones is crucial.

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